Jessie Zeng was able to connect
consumer likes on social media with a
network of factories in China to
produce custom apparel on demand.

pSURfacInG

NANODEGREES

Technological change
vastly outpaces universities’ ability to adapt, and
future workers will need
continued skills-refreshers
to stay relevant. Enter
nanodegrees: hyper-specific learning programs
that offer certifications
for tech-based skills and
increasingly important
alternatives to traditional
four-year degrees. Nano-degree institution Udacity
has schools of business,
data science, artificial intelligence, and autonomous
systems, in which 50,000
students spend an average
of 10 to 15 hours a week in
challenging courses built
to rival the big schools’.

Its competitor Coursera
offers certificates in hundreds of subjects. These
programs’ fees are generally far cheaper than even
community colleges’. And
next-generation nano-degree programs may soon
include adaptive learning
tools that apply machine
learning to map individual
students’ strengths and
weaknesses and the pace
at which they grasp key
objectives—and then personalize curricula to them.

Future job applicants
may have a constellation
of nanodegrees rather
than one diploma from a
single institution–and the
most-qualified students
may take different paths
from high school to the
workforce, and still possess
skills that can be put to
immediate use. Currently,
only certain licensable
professions—like medicine—require continuing
education to maintain
professional standing. It’s
possible that, for other
degrees to stay current,
we’ll be supplementing
our educations with nanodegrees every few years.

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